This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

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It was a slow week for substantive news, aside from President Trump’s surprise signing of the Miscellaneous Tariff Act, which reduces tariffs on about 1,700 goods worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including some goods targeted in Trump’s new China tariffs. Big developments are brewing on other issues from the Supreme Court to NAFTA to a possible government shutdown. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies issued new regulations ranging from “certain entities” to moving vegetables.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 72 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 35 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 20 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 2,340 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,269 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,312 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 719 pages the previous week.
  • The 2018 Federal Register totals 46,545 pages. It is on pace for 65,007 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Five such rules have been published this year, none in the past week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2018’s economically significant regulations is a net savings ranging from $348.9 million to $560.9 million.
  • Agencies have published 77 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • So far in 2018, 419 new rules affect small businesses; 21 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.